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Near Miss for Kibbutz in Path of Sinai Incursion

KEREM SHALOM, Israel — The members of the tiny kibbutz here on Israel’s troubled border with Egypt and the Gaza Strip were just finishing a light supper in their dining hall on Sunday evening when text messages warned them to take cover.

They heard three loud blasts, the familiar sound of mortars fired from Gaza, as they scurried to the sealed pub under the dining hall or to the safe rooms in their modest homes. There they stayed until near midnight — Andy Breakell recalled watching Usain Bolt win the gold medal in the 100-meter dash — many with no idea what was unfolding around them.

Only next morning, Mr. Breakell said, did he learn that masked gunmen had killed 16 soldiers just across the border in Egypt, blown up a stolen truck at the border fence, and driven a stolen armored vehicle loaded with explosives about a mile into Israel. It was half a mile from the kibbutz entrance when Israeli airstrikes destroyed the vehicle.

“As it carried on and on and on, we realized it was more serious than usual,” Mr. Breakell, 58, said in a meeting with journalists here on Wednesday afternoon. “If the troop carrier had turned left into our street and broken into the kibbutz ... ” he added, trailing off.

Mr. Breakell, an immigrant from Manchester, England, who joined this kibbutz in 2006, has the unenviable task of serving on its recruitment committee. A military post near Kerem Shalom is where the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit was kidnapped; the tunnels he was smuggled through pop up in the fields kibbutzniks tend nearby. Mortar shells fired from Gaza regularly send residents running to safe rooms. Now, this.

Aviv Leshem, a spokesman for the kibbutz movement, said Wednesday that some aspiring members see settling near the dangerous border as a personal or nationalist mission. He said that in the aftermath of Sunday’s attack, the movement’s leaders would try to support the Gaza-area kibbutzim, perhaps by pressuring the government to provide economic incentives for moving there.

Founded in 1968, Kerem Shalom — Hebrew for Vineyard of Peace — closed in 1995 for economic reasons. It was revived in 2001 and is now one of about 60 of Israel’s 275 kibbutzim that operate close to the original socialist style, with members giving their entire salary to a central kitty and receiving a monthly allowance. Dinners are communal, and there are cut-rate cars for rent, though children are no longer raised in group quarters separate from their parents.

When Mr. Breakell arrived, the kibbutz had 15 adult members, down from a high of 80 in its first incarnation. Now there are 50, seven or eight of whom work on about 900 acres shared with another nearby kibbutz for crops of potatoes, carrots, wheat, peanuts and flowers. Members of the kibbutz would like it to grow to perhaps 150 people, Mr. Breakell said, but it is running out of homes with the safe rooms required for Israelis living so close to Gaza.

One of the newest arrivals is Syn Levy, a single mother who said she was a prized recruit because of her high salary at a software start-up. She and her 12-year-old son moved to Kerem Shalom about a month ago from Kfar Saba, a suburb of Tel Aviv, for a trial period of a few months.

On Sunday night, Ms. Levy was chatting on the dining hall porch when the warning message came. Her son was elsewhere on the kibbutz, “so I was panicking,” she recalled. He spent the next few hours at a friend’s, while she became barmaid at the pub shelter, where about 20 residents were joined by a busload of soldiers rerouted from the road where the armored car was destroyed.

“We had some drinks, we had some talks, of course we watched the news,” said Ms. Levy, 42, adding that the episode has, strangely, made her more committed to the kibbutz. “When we got home and started talking about it, me and my son, I had the feeling this is the place I want to stay. It feels like you belong somewhere.”

Carol Sutherland contributed reporting from Jerusalem.

A version of this article appears in print on August 9, 2012, on page A10 of the New York edition with the headline: For Residents Of Kibbutz, A Near Miss Is Unsettling. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe